Tubular yarn carriers are commonly employed in the textile industry to support a quantity of yarn in package form, and so that the yarn may be processed in package form or simply transported between various manufacturing operations. The yarn is commonly wound on the tube by an automatic winding machine, wherein the tubes are mounted and held between conical holders of the machine, which impart rotation to the tube. Also, the machine includes a yarn traversing device whereby the advancing yarn is traversed in a back and forth pattern so as to form spiral windings on the tube.
A well recognized problem associated with winding operations of the described type is the fact that the initial windings on the tube tend to slip toward the longitudinal center of the tube, thus defeating the desired uniformity of the wind. To avoid this problem, it is common practice to initially clamp the leading end of the yarn to be wound between one end of the tube and the associated conical holder of the winding machine, which serves to anchor the windings at that end of the carrier. To anchor the windings at the other end, it is common practice to form an integral yarn catching device adjacent the other end which is designed to engage and anchor the windings. However, winding machines are of two conventional types, commonly referred to as the P-wind machine and the Q-wind machine. In the P-wind machine, the yarn leading end is anchored at the right end of the carrier as viewed by the operator, and the carrier is oriented so that the yarn catching device is on the left end of the carrier. In the Q-wind machine, the yarn leading end is anchored at the left end, and the carrier is oriented with the yarn catching device on the right end. Also, the known yarn catching devices are not universal, in that they are able to provide effective yarn catching upon winding, and non-snag release upon unwinding, for only the P-wind machine, or the Q-wind machine, but not both. Thus it has been conventional to fabricate the yarn carriers with yarn catching devices which are designed for use with only P-wind machine, or only with Q-wind machines, and as a result, carriers having two different designs of the yarn catching devices were required to be manufactured, and then inventoried by the users of the carriers.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a yarn carrier which incorporates a universal yarn catching means, and which is able to effectively catch the yarn when the carrier is mounted on either a P-wind machine or a Q-wind machine.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a yarn carrier of the described type, which not only effectively catches the yarn, but also permits the snag free removal of the yarn from the carrier in either direction of rotation.